New Jack City

I am a criminal justice student. I am not the po-lice. Instead, I academically study the "Why" or "causes" of crime. I am burning the midnight oil tonight writing a paper about how this movie accurately portrayed three arguments of how the criminal justice system acts as an oppressor. First, this movie is about the "Crack" scare which lead to politicians adopting get tough mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines. These laws pertaining to Crack Cocaine sentencing have a sentencing disparity: 500 grams Powder Cocaine=5years v. 5 grams Crack Cocaine=5 years. That has been called an example of laws being used "to further racial disparity and sanction racial harms" because people of color are the ones that are primarily arrested for crack cocaine offenses. Secondly, the poor-remember the neighborhood and how Nino and his gang were small timers until they rose to the top. Well, the police focus their arresting attention on the poor.Their crimes are sought after and punishment is imposed while the middle and upper classes crimes are most often ignored. Thirdly, blacks being targeted for drug charge arrests is a way to control what Marx calls the Surplus Population-the people that society doesn't really need.It can also be looked at like this, our criminal justice system is controlled by professional white males and a Nino Brown-one who makes it out of poverty by alternative means is an affront to the system that put the white professional in power because they consider it cheating and they feel that he doesn't have a place at their table because he is black. The Kennedy's and the Rockefeller's back in the day made their money through illegal means-and now they are respectable-what's the difference?

I can't believe I liked this on its original release. I found the film quite dated (crack is the drug of choice), poorly written and edited, and unfortunately poorly acted. Among my issues are: Ice-T as a guy named Scotty Appleton? Why didn't Mario ever tie his tie? Is there one more Mafia stereotype they could have included? Was an editor present, or did they just open the shutter and shoot? And finally, Chris Rock gets the award for worst cold turkey (later recidivist) performance ever (for a character named "Pookie"). He was bad. Redemption is present, however, in Wesley Snipes' performance (his career unfortunately seems to have followed the Treat Williams model), the music, and the design and filming of the crack "warehouse/factory." A "3." See "Do the Right Thing" or "Boyz N the Hood" instead. N.B. Judd Nelson's appearance here brings to mind one of the great questions of the 80s: "What the hell did Andrew Ridgely do in Wham?" Judd is in this film because...?

I don't normally write reviews, but this film annoyed me so much I felt compelled to put some of my opinions forward. Firstly, the script. I really couldn't get over how terrible it was, given the good reviews I'd read before watching the film. Don't get me wrong, I like a brainless, thoughtless actioner as much as anyone, maybe more, but I at least want my action scenes to be strung together with some kind of purpose. Here, stuff just happened. The film would be going in one direction and then, with the flick of a switch, that idea would be abandoned and we'd go after something else. The end in particular suffered from this problem, and left me thinking, "WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST DO THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE?!" Another massive problem I had was with the acting. I'm sure Ice-T has plenty of fans out there, but I couldn't even put up with how bad his acting was in this. It was just atrocious. I wasn't even able to enjoy it in an amused way, because I really got the impression he thought he was being cool. Judd Nelson as his partner also annoyed me, because he seemed to be in the film for no reason other than to have a white guy in the cast. Most of the time he said and did nothing, and in the one scene where he actually takes part in a conversation, I couldn't help but feel that whatever he was saying was irrelevant. The film did, however, have one saving grace - Wesley Snipes. As bad as everything else was, Snipes was really having fun here, and it shows. Like a black Tony Montana, he chews up every scene he's in, (mostly) overcoming the lame script he has to work with. Sadly though, it's not enough to save what was otherwise a very long 90 minutes. Check it out for Snipes, but don't necessarily expect to come away smiling.